John McPhee on Maine
The sky after dark was a clear as a lens. There was no moon. We stood on the shore, tilted back our heads, looked up past the branches of the jack pines, and watched for shooting stars. One after another they came, at intervals too short to require patience. All the stars in the canopy seemed closer. We were so far out into the clear. There is more to Maine than exists in the imagination. Henri’s house in New Hampshire is a lot closer to New York City than it is to this lakeshore in Maine. Maine is half of New England. It is as large as New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts put together. And most of Maine is in the north woods, reaching embarassingly far into Canada. Our trip would move in a northerly direction, and we had scarcely begun it, yet the lake we were camped by was a good bit north of Montreal. A shooting star burst with almost frightening brightness, illuminating our faces, lighting the sky like a flare. A loon wailed, long and mournfully. We stayed up late–to ten-thirty–too pleased with Maine to go to sleep (pp 28-29, John McPhee, The Survival of the Bark Canoe, Farrar Strauss Giroux: New York, 1975).
January 1, 2022 John McPhee Maine wilderness